


Blind

by Aricle



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect 3 - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 08:24:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5121536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aricle/pseuds/Aricle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a memory has to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blind

A slow sky shifted from dawn to dusk over the lone field, and no eyes saw but those that remembered the ones who had last breathed air there, a space now given over to Reapers and ash.

Dark and not-quiet, but it would do. Who the spirits was he kidding? It did nothing for him at all, and neither did the nameless drinks and faces in the swirl around him. He tossed back the last of the drink and stepped out of the bar and into the shadows.

Shore leave and nowhere he wanted to be. He took the first door straight off the elevator, following the thread of music rather than navigate further elevators. What was this place? Dark Star, and it came back to him, that staggered night and morning when- no. Not the reason I'm here, he reminded himself.

A glass and a moment stacked between this one and the next, nothing more. At the bar, ordering something that he was informed was green, turned out to have a patriotic nothing speared through the lime wedge, and he tossed it aside. Bet the Reapers aren't accessorizing _their_ drinks, and he threw back that one, and signaled for another. “Hold the frills, please.”

Another glass, and a third, nothing doing, just dwindling credits and overlapping rings on the counter before him.

“Still seeing that face?”

“What?”

“The face at the bottom of each glass.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing. I only drink like that when there's a face at the bottom of my glass, maybe it's something else with you.”

Kaidan turned to look at the owner of the voice, brown skin, dark hair, looking like nobody he knew, which suited him just fine.

“Could be. What are you drinking to?”

“The face in _my_ glass. Doesn't look like he's going away anytime soon. How about yours?”

“I'm not looking to drink him away. Just trying to stitch one moment to the next somehow without hanging on it.”

“Mmm. Well, there's ways and there's ways to pass time.”

“That so?”

“Up for flying blind?”

“Do you always speak in riddles?”

“No, and not now either. Give me a moment?”

“Why not.”

Kaidan stood, picked up his drink, and followed the brunette to a dark alcove. A blue haze seeped into the dark and picked out teeth and whites of eyes, and Kaidan leaned back against the wall.

“Turn around.”

He turned and waited, pause stacked upon pause, a breath at his neck, and at last, hands broke the silence with a caress to his hips. Hips and solidity of bone and blood, some weight to what seemed insubstantial, back covered in a rather pleasant way.

“Here's what I've got in mind: let's do this blind, no names, nothing beyond the faces we both have behind our eyes. Try it- close your eyes.”

Kaidan's eyes closed, and the mouth at his ear kissed along said ear, and neck, then his cheekbone. Mouth and warm breath mixed in with memory, with _his_ face, it felt good, and he said, “Blind it is.”

“Let's go.”

The credit chit passed over the counter, a door somewhere opened then closed, and the room was theirs. Clothes off, neither fast nor slow, just matter-of-fact until hands became tender, and the brunette said, “How did yours like it?”

“Slow kiss and fast inside. Yours?”

“Works for my memory.”

A kiss at Kaidan's jaw then mouth, kiss made actual, and he closed his eyes tightly, letting all he could pull from memory float that moment, tongue and lips counterpoint to the desire he courted with hands here-and-there, now-and-then, keeping dates with that memory. Does he wait on me the way I still wait on him? If the rumours are true, he's alive, but that's all I've got.

Kiss, tongue, hands, and he breathed into kiss and memory, and that parted his lips all the more, and slow took haste, and haste might have made waste, but not there-and-then, and they both seemed to agree, a stutter-stop-walk-wrestle to the bed that was not uniquely anyone's and it was the perfect canvas for the blind leading the blind, here-and-now.

Knees at bed then folded back onto the mattress, the tender lift of coverlet to reveal sheet matched to memory, hands at his hips then legs, a slow divide, and a slower joining, hand and fingers followed by that slotting into place, where king covered king, no check or mate, just them, fast as he liked it when we had the time to do more than kiss in the back of the Mako and grope at each other under cover of being hurled together during Shepard's clumsy landing maneuvers, and that sequence of memory underscored by hands and body against his, was so good, and before his body got to the full celebration of that fact, he said, “I've got a name.”

“What's that?”

“His.”

His companion thrust against him, tender hands and hips against Kaidan's, _now_ folded into _then_ , and each said but one word in that last push-pull.

“Garrus!”

“Robert.”

Leaving the bar, returning to the bunker where bodies shrouded in blankets were all that remained, he thought of Kaidan, and cursed himself at having left no word for him, but there was no way to leave word and do what he was now doing, and it tore at him every day. The rumour that Shepard was alive gave him hope, that where she was, Kaidan might be or would be.

That slow sky shifted from dusk to dawn, a stir of wind shivered among the ashes, as if he answered yet to his name.


End file.
